


Rescue [Choices]

by alyyks



Series: Damned If We Won't Try [2]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, CT-27-5555 | Fives | ARC-5555 Lives, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode: S06e04 Orders, Gen, Mentioned Anakin Skywalker, Not Canon Compliant, Not Canon Compliant - Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Final Season, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:34:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22736530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyyks/pseuds/alyyks
Summary: In the privacy of his helmet, Rex watches. In the privacy of his helmet, he could be saying and doinganything.  Which is exactly what he’s doing, a step back to the right of his General.“Ahsoka, are you on-planet?”“I am. What happened?”“Fives came back from Kamino. According to the chatter, he tried to kill the Chancellor."—or, Ahsoka and her crew rescue Fives.
Series: Damned If We Won't Try [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/943509
Comments: 13
Kudos: 135





	Rescue [Choices]

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted on tumblr from a anon prompt, now edited and expended in honor of the last season of TCW getting released.
> 
> There is a whole bunch of bits and pieces in that 'verse that will be posted at some point. But the major thing to know is that Ahsoka put together a Search and Rescue operation with the backing of politicians (Riyo Chuchi, Bail Organa, and Padmé Amidala mostly) and several clones decided to stay with her.

In the privacy of his helmet, Rex watches. In the privacy of his helmet, he could be saying and doing _anything_. Which is exactly what he’s doing, a step back to the right of his General. 

“Ahsoka, are you on-planet?” 

_“I am. What happened?”_

She grew too fast, he thinks sometimes. _She grew too fast and she keeps saving us_ —he gives her the coordinates of clones troopers stranded too far away for official rescue to be able to get to them, she save them. He knows Cody and Wolffe do the same now, after furious arguments from the latter and quiet questions from the former. He doesn’t know if Kenobi and Skywalker, any of the other Jedi, or any of the other clone commanders, know what she does, what her group does. 

He knows there’s always one member of her group’s with an ear on the GAR channels, listening for troubles and news. And he suspects Ahsoka still has access to some Jedi channels. Fives is lighting up all of the Coruscant ones: civilian, Jedi, GAR—but not in the way it should be done for a brother gone rogue. 

“Fives came back from Kamino. According to the chatter, he tried to kill the Chancellor.”  
  
A helmet is never silent. He can hear his breathing. He can’t hear what she thinks, how she reacts to what he said. He continues. “Our orders are to apprehend him alive and bring him back to the Jedi Council—but I don’t have access to all channels.” He doesn’t know what the GAR channels he doesn’t have access to, the ones above his rank, say. He suspects. He worries. He doesn’t want to see another brother executed—Fives can’t have done what they say he has—but three days ago, he would have never thought Tup would shoot General Tiplar either. 

His guts twist. He trusts Ahsoka.

—

“You’re not going in alone.”

“I can take care of myself, and Fives wouldn’t hurt me.”

Ahsoka doesn’t need the Force or for Arni to take his helmet off to know he’s scowling furiously. In the short time they’ve been working together, she’s come to know a few things very well about the lieutenant: he’s very good at his job, he worries about everything, and he’s incredibly protective of the people around him. That she’s technically his commanding officer (albeit without being GAR, or Jedi, ‘only’ a civilian contractor) and can use the Force doesn’t factor in. 

_“I’ve got confirmation,”_ they both hear Double say in their headset and helmet. _“I have an holo of him leaving the medbay—this brother is not okay—and then there’s three uninjured Coruscant Guards stumbling out, an unofficial drone dispatch, and a call to all Coruscant Guards 3 seconds later.”_ Double doesn’t believe in coincidences, and his tone make it clear. 

“He’s being followed—do they think he’s working with others?” Arni wonders out loud. 

_“He’s not marked as ‘apprehend alive’ on the GAR channels.”_ There’s a pressure in the back of her montrals building, like a storm front, like a loose electrical wire. 

“Can you track the drone?” Ahsoka asks. She reaches for the Force, for confidence, for guidance—but it twists, electric. 

_“No. I can’t even tell which one was dispatched—and that shouldn’t happen, even with Fox’s resources. You can’t just vanish a serial number.”_

They are in blind. They are in blind and she is now even more certain they have to find Fives, have to, before anyone else. Rex’s tone—the unusual roughness of his accent, the cut-off hitch of his breathing—had been her first clue to it.

Arni and Double are quick to map how far Fives could have gone from the known point of origin, dispatching teams of twos of their small group in whatever transports they could borrow. 

Parsec is already at the controls of the nearest closed speeder, waiting for them. Arni steps right next to her and stay there. He’s only carrying his DC-17 sidearm—Ahsoka takes it as a gesture of trust. Trust that her reading of Fives is right. Trust that the situation won’t degenerate. 

The pressure grows. 

—

Half an hour later, Rex calls her again.

“Ahsoka—he was in contact with Kix. He wants to meet me or General Skywalker, gave us coordinates.”

 _“Where?”_

And he gives her the coordinates, even as he follows Skywalker to the fastest transport that could be commandeered. The bad feeling that has been twisting his insides, that felt like the imperceptible drop before being hit in a transport and free-falling, keeps twisting.

—

Their speeder zips through the air traffic, faster than they should—but the Coruscant Security Forces won’t stop them. Ahsoka wonders idly if CSF even exists as an entity still, if it hasn’t been assimilated by the GAR and the Coruscant Guards. The war has changed many things, and too fast. 

They touch down a platform away from the exact coordinates, at Ahsoka’s insistence. There is something wrong, something bad, and she can feel it in the back of her montrals—as if they are too late, or are going to be. 

Parsec remains with the transport in stand by, and Ahsoka and Arni run through the corridors to reach the coordinates’ area. Ahsoka keeps her eyes and focus on the situation, and still the flickering shadows and blinking lights reminds her too much of another chase, another time. She has to control her breathing.

“Fives?” 

Her call echoes in the warehouse. 

“Fives, it’s Ahsoka, I’m not armed—”

“ _Comman_ —?“ Fives’ voice echoes back, seemingly coming from nowhere. “Stay where you are! Both of you!” 

Ahsoka stops in her tracks, Arni a couple steps behind her. She raises her hands. “This is Lieutenant Arni, he’s with me; Rex gave me your coordinates. You’ve been followed—“

“You’re not supposed to be there!” 

Arni grips her shoulder to stop her from moving further, points at the ceiling. There’s something up there—but it’s too dark for her to see it. Arni probably has a better view, and a scan, of it, whatever it is.

“Where am I supposed to be, then?” She answers Fives, and she still can’t pinpoint him. The electricity in the back of her mortals is back, slippery, like running out of time.

“Out of this! Safe!” There’s a brief pause, then “The General— and Rex— they need to know— they need to know—that I'm being framed. That I need help!”

“Come with us, Fives, please!” She steps forward, and Arni grabs her shoulder, throwing her back behind him. A ray shield starts where she would have been standing, had Arni not acted. She stares at it for a second, then shouts at the darkness, “Do you know why I’m still in this?! I’m in it for you, Fives, for Arni and Parsec and all the others they’re willing to leave behind! I am not abandoning you, and I am here to help, but you have to come with us because _the GAR has no orders to take you alive_!”

Finally, finally she sees him, and he looks awful, pale and drawn and bald, and she extends a hand, extends the Force she can reach in comfort—

And Arni shoot a stunning bolt and Fives falls. 

“Arni!” She has the time to yell as she runs to Fives, and she tries to not remember the crackling of the stun bolt running through her bones and how cold it was. 

“We were running out of time, Ahsoka.” He taps at the side of his helmet. “Double located General Skywalker and Captain Rex, they are on the move. Commander Fox’s men are right behind them.”

Fives is blessedly unconscious, his skin clammy, his pulse fluttering under her fingers. The Force slips and twists and prods. _Away away away_ it pushes. She follows. “He needs medical attention—order everyone back to the VantGarde and get Hexe on standby, we need to leave Coruscant.” 

They run back to their transport, Fives thrown over Arni’s shoulders. Parsec lifts off as they step in the speeder. Ahsoka looks back behind them, and for an instant, she’s certain she feels two very familiar people passing by in the Force. 

—

“Let’s hope Fives is inside,” Skywalker says.

“Eh, I hope he knows what he’s doing,” Rex replies. He should have kept his bucket on, he thinks half a second later.

He keeps a step behind his General, enters the warehouse. Most of the light comes from a ray shield buzzing away, one that doesn’t seem to be keeping anything in. 

“Fives? Fives, we’re here.” 

There’s no answer. Rex walks in further, catches a glimpse of corridors and further storage, rusted walls and blinking lights. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone in, sir,” he calls back. 

“That’s the coordinates Kix gave us, right?”

“Yes, sir. It’s possible he’s not here yet.”

“It’s possible he was never there in the first place,” Skywalker replies. He looks grim—he’s looked like this more and more as the months passed. “We’ll have to retrace his steps from 79’s.”

When they walk back out, there’s a Coruscant Guard transport and half a platoon landing. Commander Fox steps out, and Skywalker frowns and shakes his head, goes to talk to him.

Rex follows. The feeling in his guts twists, twists, twists.

—

“Everyone in?” Ahsoka asks, running up the ramp of the _VantGarde_. Fives is being held up between Parsec and Arni, still unconscious and pale, and Hexe is right around the corner, the red crosses brights on his arms. She stays out of their way, keeps running up. She can feel the buzz of the engines under her feet—like electricity and pressure. 

“You were the last ones,” Neutro says, half in the comm in her ear, half right to her as she burst onto the bridge. 

“We’re cleared for take-off, everyone strap in,” Seka says, and the two pilots raise the ship from the ground. 

Ahsoka barely feels the pressure of the take-off. There’s pressure and twisting and electricity and if she had ears she’d have her hands clamped on them to shut it out, shut it out. “Lay in a course for—“ She has no idea where to go. She knows she needs to go, the Force is saying so, the sheer pressure of it is saying so— “Where’s the nearest neutral medical facility?” She asks.

They are clearing the atmosphere by that point, their authorization codes giving them priority exit. Seka goes through a list, on one of the many monitors on his side. “One that would accept clone troopers in without seeing it an act of war? Alderaan, North Brental, Naboo for sure—“

“No, that won’t—just, lay in a course to Corellia for now, but be ready to jump back straight away.” 

Neutro and Seka don’t even look at each other, don’t question. They’ve gotten used to flying by the seat of their pants—the seat of their pants and the Force, and they are nice enough to not call her nuts to her face half the time. 

Double is in the room he refitted into their Ears—hear all, see all, and all the information they can need at their fingers. Half of it is very, very illegal, even for a GAR-sanctioned operation backed by influential politicians, and vital to their efforts. They’d have never found Galek without it, they would have never found the two platoons of 785th snow troopers stranded and half-frozen on Ixitacki. 

She bends over his shoulder, observing the moves of his fingers. She can see the tension in his neck from here, the one that says he’s in pain and refusing to show it or take his painkillers.

“What’s the word?”

“ _Hyperspace in 4… 3…_ ” says Neutro on the main comm.

“I think we did it. I think we slipped the brother straight under Fox’s nose,” he answers. His fingers stop tapping when the ship jumps to hyperspace, a tiny red rectangle showing up in the leftmost corner of the monitor. The relays the Ears rely on don’t go through hyperspace—she can hear his voice and Galek’s finishing that in unison, “don’t go through hyperspace yet.”

Double twists as much as he can to look at her. “I couldn’t get the security cam from inside the chamber once he was with the Chancellor—and more telling I can’t find either the numbers or the helmet cams of the brothers who were in there with them. Did he say anything? Or did we do what the GAR has been afraid of since the beginning and we went rogue for a brother?”

And in his words, there’s only the certainty that it would be right, it would be worthwhile. There should have been someone to back him up, to back Arni’s squad up, to back Parsec and Neutro and Halo and Shell and Eclipse and Galek and Hexe up, and with them another hundred brothers. There wasn’t, so that’s what they’ve become. Even if it makes them _other_. Even if it takes them out of the GAR. They’ll do their best to keep going and in doing so, to allow a brother to fight another day, to live another day, to _have a choice_. 

“All he had the time to say was that he had been framed, and that he needed help… and that Anakin and Rex had to know.” She puts a hand on his shoulder, squeezes lightly. She can feel the knotted up muscles under his fatigues and jacket. “Go rest up, Double—at least take your shot.” 

He sighs, takes the hypospray of painkillers from the pouch he keeps them in. “Corellia is only 4 hours away. I’ll need that to piece the footage I have.” 

She stays until he has taken the shot, pressed against his clavicle. She squeezes his shoulder again, and he cracks his back before going back to his screens. His hover chair buzzes for a second, moving slightly to the side. 

Double’ll never walk again, but he’ll fight and do his best to keep what happened to him to happen to another brother. 

Four hours. They have four hours until Corellia. And then what? In the corridor, short and cramped, Ahsoka has to stop and breath, her hands over her mouth. The pressure is still there, but diffuse. The Force—she closes her eyes and centers herself, stepping into the light trance like stepping into sunlight. Electricity and urgency still, but—not immediate. Not a storm, not twisting electricity, but pressure, the whine of an engine badly tuned. 

“Tano,” says Galek, and by his tone, it wasn’t the first time he had called to her. 

“Yes—Yes. Any—“ 

Galek nods, as always never using a word where a gesture can do. “Hexe wants you, medbay.” He continues to the bridge. 

Parsec and Fi are outside the room proper. It’s Parsec who gestures to the door for her to enter: Fives is on the one bed that can fit in there, the upper armor gone, bucket-less Arni and Dice holding his arms down while Hexe tries to—

Fives’s awake, and fighting weakly. He shouldn’t be aware, those stuns take at least an hour to shake.

“Fives?” She moves into his field of vision. 

“Commander—“ He blinks as if he’s not seeing her properly. Hexe takes advantage of him being focused on her to take blood samples, and still Arni and Dice hold on. “Where—?”

“On the _VantGarde_ , home to our group of Search and Rescue, in route to Corellia. We couldn’t stay on Coruscant, half the GAR was after you.”

“Y’have to—no, General… ‘nd Rex—have to—“

“They are still on Coruscant. Anything you want to transmit, we can do that from here.”

“No—I have—evidence… had…” His struggles are more and more subdued, until Arni and Dice are just holding his wrists. 

Hexe hisses in displeasure in the background, move around his brothers to scan Fives. “Ahsoka, he needs better facilities than we have, and four hours to Corellia is not going to cut it—he’s in shock and there are things in his system I can’t track down that definitively shouldn’t be there.” 

She looks to Arni. “Can we rendezvous with a GAR ship? Who’d be nearest, Master Koon or Allie?”

“No!” Fives blurts, and Dice has to hold him back least he clatters to the floor. Fives sags into the half-embrace. “No, no more Jedi—“

“And no more questions, unless you want to keep disturbing my patient!” Hexe rarely use medic privileges. Always in last resort. Always when they really, really need to listen to him. 

“How d’I know this s’not a trap…” Fives has the energy to mumble, his eyes on Ahsoka. “How d’I know… no trick…” 

“Fives…” She gets closer, and carefully, very carefully, she puts her hands on his cheeks. He’s staring blankly, and she knows that look now. It’s the look of men who were ready to die, who thought themselves dead already, and can’t see yet that there is another way, can’t even imagine it, because hope kills more surely than firefights. “I’m not a commander anymore. I’m not a Jedi either. I’m here to rescue you if you’ll let me,” and she smiles, not feeling sixteen Standard at all, feeling she’s running out of time much like Fives, Arni, and the others. She can feel his pulse jumping and slowing down, steadying under her hands. “Bald’s not a good look for you,” she adds softly, jokingly. 

So intent they are on each other that she barely notices Hexe unfolding a blanket around Fives, starting an IV line for fluids, Dice still holding him half upright and close, so close that she can feel his body heat at the very tip of her fingers. 

“ ‘Soka—This, it's...bigger than any of us. Bigger than anything I could have imagined…” He’s fighting against unconsciousness, she can feel it. Fighting the stun bolt still, fighting whatever is in his system, and now she can feel the weirdness sweeping in his system, the wrongness of it.

“Hexe, should he be left to sleep?” she asks, not taking her eyes off Fives.

Hexe’s mouth twists, he shakes his head: “Not much else we can do.” He sighs. "I'll work on keeping him stable until we get to Corellia." 

“The mission,” Fives whispers, and she feels it on her skin more than she hears it, “the nightmares… they’re not… there…” His eyes close and he finally relaxes. His heart is beating under her skin, one-two, one-two, echoed by the vital signs trackers Hexe wastes no time in putting on him.

When she straightens up, Dice and Arni are staring at the sleeping brother, eyes haunted. 

“Guys?” Arni jumps when she lays a hand on his vambrace. “Is everything okay?” 

“Yeah,” he answers, a little too fast. “Yeah. Just… Mission, and nightmares. It sounded a little familiar, is all.” 

The Force twists, pressure in the back of her montrals. 

“Out, all of you,” Hexe says. 

Three and a half hours to Corellia. 

—

The hold is big enough to gather two platoons of bone-tired and cold troopers. For the crew members of the _VantGarde_ and her, it’s almost too big a space. 

It’s always intimidating, facing them. They are not her men. She is not their commanding officer. They all work together toward the same goal. She just… facilitates things. They take her direction because they choose to, and it’s a mark of respect and trust she fights each day to be worthy of. 

In light of current events, she has reasons to wonder how much longer she’ll be able to fly and fight with them. 

“We have another three hours and change to Corellia,” she starts, and she looks at each of them in turn, Arni at her side, Galek standing with his arms crossed at the mouth of the corridor that leads to the rest of the ship, Shell, Eclipse and Neutro clad only in their blacks—and she worries that she dragged them away from much-needed rest—, Fi and Halo sharing a crate as a seat, and Parsec standing within arm’s reach of them. Dice and Hexe are in the medbay, Seka has the helm, and Double is piecing together fragments of information and she has no doubt that he’s listening in, too. 

“Depending on how events unfolded on Coruscant—“ 

“Did we go rogue, Ahsoka?” And that’s Fi. “Because—that’s what’s been following us since the start of this.”

“To save a brother’s life, it’s worth it,” and that’s Shell, to her almost-surprise. She’s… not surprised by the nods of agreements that follow. She can’t see Dice, Hexe, Double and Seka, but she already know where Double is sitting on that issue. 

“It is worth it,” she agrees too. “We might be lucky and still have the full resources of the GAR at our backs. I don’t know if our departure was linked to Fives or not. For all we know for now, Fives is still believed to be on Coruscant.”

“Is it safe for us to know more?” Eclipse asks. Solid, reliable Eclipse.

Arni twists his mouth, turns to her. “Given how little we actually know…” he trails off. 

She looks at him, shrugs in answer. “Your call,” she says, because _something_ Fives said rattled him, _something_ was meant for them, not her, and she can’t understand the significance of it. The Force is silent, gone dancing-electric, like a forgotten static charge ready to zap. 

“Here’s what we know: Captain Rex of the 501st informed us that one of the men currently under his command, ARC trooper Fives, had vanished on Coruscant after allegedly attempting to kill the Chancellor. Fives was coming back from Kamino, where he had escorted another 501st brother who—“ And Arni pauses and stops and glances at her. The why is not information that’s readily available. Yet, she can’t help but think. She knew through the chatter of the 501st, and it was only a matter of time before it would be too spread out to bury. 

“Tup shot General Tiplar down during the battles on Ringo Vinda,” she finished for him, and the crew shifts, tension zapping from one to the other. 

“Another Umbara?” Galek says, and the tension ratchets up. _Umbara_ is like a call for the boogey man. Krell’s treatment and treason and Dogma’s actions were live nightmares, the kind only whispered about. Jedi slaughtering clones. Clones killing Jedi. It wasn’t anything anyone wanted to think about. The familiar guilt at not being there, her familiar guilt at not being able to have changed the course of events, it goes to the side, to be meditated on later.

She shakes her head. Tiplar was no Krell. It just made no sense. Tup deliberately shooting a Jedi made no sense. “Not friendly fire either. I don’t have any more information. Fives’ll know, maybe.” 

“Captain’s orders were to apprehend Fives and deliver him alive to the Jedi Council. GAR’s order were to eliminate him. Fives’ last words before he went under were ‘it’s bigger than any of us, than anything I could have imagined’ and ‘the mission, the nightmare, they’re not there’.” 

Arni’s last words have a definitive reaction. It appears to have hit something all the men in the hold had kept to themselves, if the side glances and lowered heads were any indication. Only Galek stays still, arms crossed, but his face shuts down. 

As Arni doesn’t seem inclined to continue, Ahsoka shares what little else they have: “Fives’s under Hexe’s care. We need better facilities than what we have onboard, so we’re going in the direction of the Corellia base. If we haven’t been burned by the time we get there and can still use the resources of the GAR, we’ll keep doing what we do best. If we’re going rogue…” She trails off. It’s their decision too. It’s mostly their decision.

Arni takes over, looks at her then at the crew, “I don’t see why we’d stop doing what we’re best at.”

It’s answered by a resounding “Hell yeah!” 

They’ll keep flying.


End file.
